Written for The East African (Nairobi)
July 31, 2006
By Parselelo Kantai (posted here with the author’s permission)
AT THE LAUNCH OF LOTTE HUGHES’s book, Moving the Maasai, Professor Bethwel Ogot stood up and declared the Kenyan project dead.
Ogot, the father of Kenyan history and Africa’s most celebrated historian, has spent most of his career writing Kenya into [...]
Death of the Kenya Dream?
On a Further Reading
Parselelo Kantai on the contested territory in writing and acting on history in Kenya, and the recent spate of books by white, western intellectuals decrying the oppressions suffered by Kenyans of various stripes under British colonialism. One of them, Caroline Elkins (author of Britain’s Gulag) reviews Adam Robert’s The Wonga Coup, [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing.
From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz philosophy. [...]
‘How to write about Africa’ by Binyavanga Wainaina
some tips: sunsets and starvation are good
Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means [...]
Some Email Considerations on the African Bush and its European Saviours
Below are some emails that I exchanged with one of my closest friends (PK) just after reading James Miller’s great essay, ‘Carnivals of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty,’ (in Political Theory, Vol. 18, #3, August, 1990.) It is a bit of a switch from the kind of digressions and rants that have appeared here in the [...]
Okri, Naipaul and Arundhati bushwhacked by Moscow-based reviewer
I have spent the last day trawling through my favorite new e-zine, the eXile, which is published in Moscow. Its book reviewer, John Dolan, is particularly adept at delivering kidney-punch reviews of the great and good.
This is Dolan on Aidan Hartley’s The Zanzibar Chest.
‘The first thing you notice about Aidan Hartley’s memoir, The Zanzibar Chest, [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Martin Kimani says it is a storm in a teacup
Dear All,
I could keep silent no longer. This storm over Kapuscinski is occurring in a tea cup, and it is only right that it should be so for the man and his writing occupy no greater a space despite his book being folded into every Peace Corps do-gooder’s back-pack. The reason I say [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: The Debate Starts to Sound Academic
I have been fascinated and excited by the debate that Binyavanga Wainaina started with his letter protesting Ryszard Kapuscinski’s depiction of Africa and Africans throughout his career. His foil is Remi Raji of the Nigeria PEN Center who writes with erudition and intelligence, arguing that Ryzard’s participation in a PEN event in NYC should not [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Binyavanga Replies to Nigerian PEN Centre
(Binyavanga’s reply to Remi Raji of the Nigerian PEN Centre)
Hi,
I agree. Mr. Ryszard Kapuscinski has a right to believe and write what he wants; and so ‘gagging’ him makes no sense to me. What is important is making our own voices clear about how we see our world.
I am far more skeptical than you are [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Nigerian PEN Centre Replies to Binyavanga’s Rage
Dear All:
Thank you for bringing this to specific attention. There is indeed reason to shudder at some of the statements credited to Mr. Kapuscinski about Africa and cultures “other” than European, but these things are not new. He has been pinned to the memory of Mr. Conrad but I doubt if his energies or [...]
Parselelo Kantai wows them at the Oxford Literary Festival
On Thursday (14/4), I went to Oxford to listen to Parselelo Kantai read at that city’s literary festival. Other than being one of my closest friends, Parsa is a hell of a writer: he is Kenya’s best journalist in my opinion and was first runner-up in the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing. The reading [...]
Ryszard Kapuscinski: Binyavanga Wainaina’s Rage in Manhattan
Dear Friends,
I am in the US, on a reading tour and just found out that Ryszard Kapuscinski will be speaking at various fora in New York City starting on Saturday the 16th of April 2005 - invited by PEN America.
(Read this extract from the PEN Charter:)
MEMBERS OF PEN should at all times use what influence [...]